1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion circuit, a control method thereof, a solid-state imaging device, and an imaging apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to an A/D conversion circuit having a comparator, a control method thereof, a solid-state imaging device using the A/D conversion circuit, and an imaging apparatus having the solid-state imaging device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the solid-state imaging device, for example, the CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor), it maybe difficult to achieve small area occupation of a circuit part and noise reduction at the same time. To reduce noise in the CMOS image sensor, there is known a technology that, in a readout circuit (column circuit), which is arranged for each column of a pixel arrangement of a pixel array part to read out signals from pixels, reduces noise by performing an arithmetic on a narrow noise band signal on the basis of a capacitance ratio using a switched capacitor circuit to amplify the signal, and inputting and converting the amplified signal (for example, see JP-A-2005-269471).
By simply incorporating an integral-type A/D conversion circuit, which is advantageous in terms of the area, with the signal amplifying circuit, it is possible to realize a readout circuit, which can perform A/D conversion while reducing noise.